Jews Are Not Allowed To Document Their Own Murder

Steven Spielberg's planned movie about the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel has predictably triggered calls for a boycott.

Steven Spielberg: Angela Weiss/AFP

by Justin Rosario

Humans use narratives to frame and understand traumatic events. We use these stories to preserve those events for future generations so they do not become dry facts in history books. In modern times one of our major vehicles for creating powerful storytelling is through film. The more traumatic the event, the more movies we make about it.

Unsurprisingly there are a lot of movies about the terrorist attacks on New York on September 11th, 2001. Generally, there are two kinds of movies about 9/11. The first kind centers around the actual attack and its immediate aftermath. The second kind focuses on our time at war. There are sub-genres to these, of course. There is a spectrum of Iraq and Afghanistan movies that range from American exceptionalism propaganda to “what the hell are we doing here killing civilians?”

October 7th was an extremely traumatic day for Israel and, accordingly, it’s going to be documented in much the same way. The first films will document the violence of that day. This appears to be enraging people for the usual reasons:

Spielberg, who is Jewish, was deeply disturbed by the Hamas attack that left 1,200 Jews butchered. 1,200 Jews including, this really cannot be repeated often enough, children and babies who were killed up close and without remorse. Women and little girls raped, mutilated, and then burned. Entire families wiped out simply for existing.

These facts are not in dispute because Hamas recorded the slaughtering then made the videos public. They even bragged about their glorious victory, reveling in the pain and suffering they inflicted on innocent people.

None of this is contested. But that, it seems, is the problem for the “Free Palestine!” crowd.

Holocaust Denial exists for a reason

When I first heard of Holocaust Denialism, I didn’t think it was real. How could it be? There are tens of thousands of pictures. Hundreds of hours of film. The death camps still exist and you can take guided tours around them. It is, by far, the most well-documented atrocity in human history — and we as a species have committed a lot of atrocities.

Millions of people deny the Holocaust was as bad as the historic record shows it was. It was impossible for the Nazis to kill that many Jews. Maybe only a million died? As if that would make it more acceptable.

Or, instead of reducing the horror, they just insist it didn’t happen at all. It was all a lie, made up by “The Jews” (who else?) to destroy blameless Nazi Germany as well as engender sympathy for, and hand power over to, the evil Jewish race for generations to come. 

That last part is key and explains an awful lot of what we are seeing right now.

After the end of WWII, when the world was exposed to the horrors of the Nazi death camps, it recoiled. Not only did antisemitism become socially unacceptable, fascism became politically toxic.

As long as the Holocaust was understood far and wide and inextricably linked to antisemitism and fascism, both projects were untenable. Therefore, The Holocaust had to be diminished. And it has been:

Almost two-thirds of young American adults do not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust, and more than one in 10 believe Jews caused the Holocaust, a new survey has found, revealing shocking levels of ignorance about the greatest crime of the 20th century.

According to the study of millennial and Gen Z adults aged between 18 and 39, almost half (48%) could not name a single concentration camp or ghetto established during the second world war.

Almost a quarter of respondents (23%) said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, or had been exaggerated, or they weren’t sure. One in eight (12%) said they had definitely not heard, or didn’t think they had heard, about the Holocaust.

10% think Jews caused the Holocaust? That’s some pretty successful propaganda right there.

But now that we’re well on our way to erasing the Holocaust and rehabilitating the good name of fascism, wouldn’t you know it? Antisemitism and fascism are on the rise again! Funny how that works.

Which brings us back to 10/7. The last thing the rabid Jew-haters of the world want is for people to feel any kind of sympathy for the Jewish people, especially if they’re trying to portray any attack on Israel as a valiant struggle for freedom. So what to do when the precipitating attack is impossible to depict as anything other than a savage massacre carried out against mostly unarmed civilians? Leaving piles of dead children and babies, raped and burned corpses? 

You do what any good Jew-hater does: Attack anyone who keeps talking about it.

Just as an aside for my good friends in the “Free Palestine!” movement who may be reading this and getting angry. What, exactly, is making your blood boil? The fact that I keep bringing up all of the raped and burned women and girls? Or the dead children and babies? Or the unarmed civilians? Or all of the families that were murdered in their homes? 

Could it be because I won’t also bring up all of the Palestinians who have died? That sounds about right:

I see people constantly demand everyone acknowledge all of the harm Israel is doing. I see constant demands they be condemned for it. Which, considering what they are doing is not unreasonable. Israel’s methods are barbaric and certainly worthy of plenty of condemnation.

But those same people explode with fury when asked to condemn Hamas. Not Palestinians. Not Muslims. Hamas. The animals who raped and murdered women and girls before burning their bodies. The soulless monsters who killed children and babies and bragged about it on video. Those guys. Why, exactly, do I have to engage with whataboutism when talking about 10/7? When accurately describing what they did after they made sure everyone knew they did it in great detail? 

The answer, of course, is that there is a concerted effort to erase 10/7 just as there is an effort to erase the Holocaust and for exactly the same reason: Jews cannot be seen as the victim no matter how great the atrocity.

This is why Susan Sarandon went in front of a crowd and erased (at least) a century of Jewish persecution in the United States. This is why mobs of Jew-haters have been attacking Jews on college campuses while college presidents refuse to say that calling for the genocide of Jews is harassment. This is why Jew-haters have been pulling down fliers of the people kidnapped and abused by Hamas, including children.

Jews are not allowed to be the victims. But Steven Spielberg’s film documenting the horrors of 10/7 will absolutely show that, well, yes, they can. That makes him the enemy and it makes his film dangerous to the Jew-haters with a vested interest in spreading that hate. 

We see you. You will not be able to go back to your sneering pretense of moral superiority after this. You walked up to the line and then you eagerly jumped over it. I know you thought there would be no consequences in Trump’s America for being an out and proud bigot but MAGAland learned that lesson the hard way and so will you. The finding out part is coming and you are not going to enjoy it.

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